Collinear Apexes of Cones

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Given three spheres, wrap a cone around each pair. Then the apexes of the three cones lie on a line.

Details

Proof: place the spheres on a flat table, and put a board on top of them. The table and board define two planes that are tangent to all three spheres. The cones and their apexes also touch both planes. The apexes must lie on the intersection of these two planes, which is a line.

References

[1] L. A. Graham, Ingenious Mathematical Problems and Methods, New York: Dover, 1959 pp. 198–199.

External Links

Exterior Tangents to Three Circles

Permanent Citation

Izidor Hafner

"Collinear Apexes of Cones"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CollinearApexesOfCones/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: November 2, 2012